The Cardinals entered Saturday night's game with the Milwaukee Brewers at Busch Stadium in "win and you're in' mode. They will enter Sunday's game with the Brewers in the same mode.
Milwaukee right-hander Brandon Woodruff overpowered the Cardinals for eight innings, allowing just two singles, walking one and striking out 10 before turning the game over to closer Josh Hader. That left-hander closed out a 3-0 Brewers win that kept them alive at 29-30 in the National League playoff race and dropped the Cardinals to 29-28 and still needing a victory on Sunday to qualify.
The Cardinals' Adam Wainwright (5-3) matched zeroes with Woodruff (3-5) for three innings but fell victim to back-to-back homers by Ryan Braun and Daniel Vogelbach in the fourth inning.
Left-hander Austin Gomber, replacing injured Dakota Hudson, will draw the start on Sunday for the Cardinals against Milwaukee left-hander Brett Anderson, who was the winning pitcher against the Cardinals in an 18-3 beatdown earlier this month in Milwaukee.
If the Brewers prevail, they will be tied with the Cardinals at .500 for a potential playoff spot and will have won the season series six games to four, meaning that the Cardinals might have to go to Detroit on Monday to play two makeup games so that they would be at 60 games played, as the Brewers will be. Whether that would happen or not also would depend on San Francisco, which entered Saturday's play at 29-29.
Saturday's game marked the eighth time this season the Cardinals had tried to climb three games clear of .500. They failed every time.
